Where In The Universe Challenge #119

By Nancy Atkinson - September 22, 2010 at 10:33 AM UTC | Extragalactic
where-in-the-universe.jpg

Here's this week's image for the Where In The Universe Challenge, to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. You know what to do: take a look at this image and see if you can determine where in the universe this image is from; give yourself extra points if you can name the instrument responsible for the image. We'll provide the image today, but won't reveal the answer until later this week. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.

UPDATE:

Answer has been posted below.

This week's WITU challenge image was a cropped version of an image I took in March 2010 of space shuttle Discovery during a midnight rollout to the launchpad. A unique silhouette shadow formed up in the clouds from the Xenon lights shining of the shuttle stack. The effect only lasted a short time, but I was able to capture it with my Fuji Finepix S2000. Here is the full image, below, which was featured on the popular

Astronomy Picture of the Day

website this week. I'm usually known for my words and not my pictures, so it was an honor to have an image I took posted on such a well-regarded website.

You can read the full story about how I captured the image on

my personal blog

, and see more images of the shadow, some of which I think might be better than this one, however the effect is more subtle.

You all made me feel very good that so many of you recognized this week's WITU as my APOD image!

[caption id="attachment_74382" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Full image of the silhouette shadow that formed on the clouds during Discovery's rollout in March 2010. Image: Nancy Atkinson"]

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com